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Dry Shade Garden Plan, 24x15 ft Under Tree, Zone 7b-8a (PDF)

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Highlights

A drawn, to-scale planting plan for a 24 ft x 15 ft bed under a mature tree. Not a plant list - a plan.

WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT

A list tells you what will live there. A plan tells you how many, how far apart, and where each one goes. That is the part people actually get wrong.

Every circle on the drawing is the plant's mature spread, drawn to scale. Nothing overlaps. The commonest mistake in a shade bed is planting at nursery-pot spacing, which looks right for two years and is a thicket by year five. This drawing shows year five.

WHAT YOU GET (6-page PDF, instant download)

- The plan, drawn to scale, on a full page
- Plant schedule: 29 plants, 10 species, with quantity, mature size, light, and spacing
- A USDA hardiness zone range on every single plant, looked up individually from the NC State Extension Plant Toolbox
- What the plan assumes about your site, so you can tell whether it fits before you buy anything
- Installation sequence, including the one thing that kills mature trees
- Watering figures for establishment
- Sources, cited

WHY MOST SHADE PLANT LISTS FAIL HERE

Almost every "shade garden" list assumes moist shade - a woodland floor with leaf litter and steady moisture. That is not what you have under a mature oak. You have dry shade, and it is a different growing condition entirely.

Hosta, foamflower, Japanese painted fern, wild ginger, astilbe. All genuinely shade plants. All documented by NC State as needing consistent moisture. Put them under an established tree and they decline for two seasons and die, and the homeowner concludes they have a black thumb.

Every plant in this plan is documented with explicit drought AND shade language. Not inferred.

WHERE IT APPLIES

Drawn from USDA Zones 7b-8a - the North Carolina Piedmont, where I work. That band also covers upstate South Carolina, north Georgia, middle and east Tennessee, central and southern Virginia, and the warm edge of the Piedmont into Maryland.

Most of the plan runs from roughly Zone 4 or 5 through Zone 8 or 9, so it travels a long way. Two entries are narrower and the schedule tells you which. Check the zone column against your own zone before you order.

THE HONEST PART

Every plant here is drought tolerant once established. None of them are drought tolerant in their first season. You are asking a new plant to compete with a mature tree for water, and the tree wins every time. Water through the first full growing season and into the second. Plan on it.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

Not a design for your address - I have not seen your tree, your grade or your soil. Not an arborist's assessment. Not a drainage design. I am a licensed North Carolina landscape contractor (CL.1872), not a professional engineer and not a registered landscape architect.

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